1/3 of the food produced on earth is wasted. Expressed in another way 28 per cent of the world’s agricultural area – is used annually to produce food that is lost or wasted. The average four-person family spends about $1,500 per year on food they trash, according to savethefood.com.
It is not just a case of wasted resources. It also has environmental implications. The exploitation of land and water resources, combined with climate change, is threatening the world’s food supply.
Agriculture accounts for at least 8.4% of total greenhouse gas emissions across the globe, according to the U.N. (Meat, dairy and rice production are the biggest offenders.) That means that if uneaten food were its own country, it would be the third-largest greenhouse gas emitter in the world, just after China and the U.S.
Fruit wastage contributes significantly to water waste in Asia, Latin America, and Europe, while large volumes of vegetable wastage in industrialized Asia, Europe, and South and South East Asia translates into a large carbon footprint for that sector. Excluding Latin America, high-income regions are responsible for about 67 per cent of all meat waste. Beyond the environmental impacts, food wastage costs some $750 billion annually to food producers.
To tackle this issue, members of the U.N. adopted a planet-wide goal of reducing food waste by 50% by the year 2030.
Instead of a one-size-fits-all solution to solving the food lost and waste crisis, the new report proposes a simple three-step system that they say can be implemented across the planet. They call it “Target-Measure-Act.”
The first part of this strategy is to establish clear goals. The report’s authors know this is doable because it has already occurred in countries that are home to about half of the world’s population, including Australia, Japan, Norway, the Arab Emirates, Vietnam, China, and members of the European and African unions. In addition, food retailers and manufacturers in the U.S. and elsewhere — including Kroger, Walmart, Wegmans, Kellogg Co. and PepsiCo — have made commitments to halve food loss and waste in their own operations by 2030.
Ultimately, however, the goal of reducing lost and wasted food across the globe can be achieved only with concrete action, the UN report authors say.
This might look like the pay-as-you-throw policy implemented in South Korea in 2013 that requires residents of Seoul to pay for the food they waste by weight.
It might look like North American farmers allowing nonprofit organizations to collect unharvested crops that can’t be sold and redistributing them to food pantries and soup kitchens.
It might also look like catering companies keeping better track of what foods are most likely to be left over and making less of them next time.
Improving access to solar-powered cold storage facilities and airtight grain storage bags could radically reduce the amount of food lost in developing nations. In wealthier countries, however, consumers will need to be persuaded to buy more fruits and vegetables that look “imperfect” but are totally fine to eat. It would also help for manufacturers to replace “sell by” labels with ones that say “use by.
What you can do
1. Shift to more vegetable oriented died
2. Glean crops
3. Eat unattractive food. Misfits Market is one of a growing number of start-up food subscription services that promises perfectly edible, though odd and occasionally unattractive fruits and vegetables, delivered to your doorstep for about half of what you’d pay at a grocery store.